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Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone
February 8, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
Google Mobile Blog
)
Back in August 2008
, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official
Google Translate for iPhone app
is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.
Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.
Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as
the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month
.
Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.
And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support
romanized
text like Pinyin and Romaji.
You can
download Google Translate now from the App Store globally
. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.
Posted by Wenzhang Zhu, Software Engineer
Happy birthday from 20,000 leagues under the sea
February 7, 2011
It wasn’t very difficult for something to spark my imagination when I was a child—whether it was a pile of leaves or a couch of stackable cushions, just about anything could jump-start my creativity. My first encounter with Jules Verne’s
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, however, sent my imagination into hyper drive.
I first found the novel while browsing through a random aisle in my local library. The cover was dark, murky and a little worn—but it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. A pair of old-fashioned divers drag their feet over the ocean floor, watching a school of fish drift by. They don’t seem to notice the twisting silhouette of a monster inching toward them.
The cover alone pulled me in, but I didn’t want to spoil all of the possible story lines by actually reading the book. Looking back, I realize that what fascinated me most was the unknown: a creative spark and the imaginative exploration that followed. Since then, I’ve become more familiar with his work and still believe that exploration is the essence of Verne’s novels. His stories pull the readers into a world filled with infinite potential—be it in the clouds, on land or under the sea.
Today’s doodle, celebrating Verne’s 183rd birthday, tries to capture that sense of adventure and exploration. Using CSS3 (and with help from our resident tech wizards Marcin Wichary and Kris Hom), the doodle enables anyone to navigate the Nautilus (nearly) 20,000 leagues with the simple pull of a lever. And for those using devices with built-in accelerometers and the latest versions of
Google Chrome
or Firefox, it’s even simpler—just tilt your device in the direction you want to explore and the Nautilus will follow.
So voyage below (and above) the waves to see what you can discover... just make sure to keep an eye out for the giant squid.
Update
Feb 9, 8:44 AM
: You can now
explore the ocean
from our Jules Verne doodle in full view and HD.
Posted by Jennifer Hom, Google Doodler
Register for Google I/O 2011
February 7, 2011
We’ve been counting down the days until Google I/O 2011 and hope that you have been, too. With 91 days, 22 hours and 45 minutes to go, we’re excited to announce that registration is now open at
www.google.com/io
. Our largest annual developer conference will take place on May 10-11, 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.
The focus of I/O 2011 will be all about the cloud, and feature the latest Google products and technologies including Android, Google Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and Google APIs. There will be many opportunities to meet members of Google’s engineering teams and take deep dives into the technologies with more than 100 technical sessions, roundtables and more. The
Developer Sandbox
, which we introduced at I/O 2009, will be back, featuring developers from more than 100 companies to demo their apps, share their experiences and exchange ideas.
If you liked our
countdown
, stay tuned for more surprises. We’ll keep you posted on the latest developments for Google I/O 2011 at the
website
, on Twitter (
@Googleio
) and
Google Buzz
. Get your tickets early—last year we
sold out
in record time!
Registration opens with an Early Bird rate of $450, which applies through April 16 ($550 after April 16). Faculty and students can register at the discounted Academia rate of $150, which will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Learn more and register today at
www.google.com/io
.
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
Update
Feb 22:
The countdown was created and animated using JavaScript and HTML.
Posted by Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering
Mobile now! Helping businesses succeed in the mobile era
February 7, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Mobile Ads Blog
)
By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50% of all Americans will own a smartphone. Because of the explosion of web-enabled mobile devices, mobile usage is now on a hockey-stick trajectory: searches on smartphones and tablets have increased by 4x in the last year, and the world of mobile apps continues to engage mobile users—125 years’ worth of Angry Birds are played every day!
For people everywhere, the mobile era has begun.
Yet most businesses haven’t adapted their online strategies—advertising, webpage design, commerce—to mobile. The opportunity for these businesses is huge and we want everyone to be able to take part. On February 10, we’re hosting an event at our New York office called “
ThinkMobile
”: Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, and our own Dennis Woodside, SVP, Americas Operations and Jason Spero, Head of Mobile, Americas, will explore some of the most significant trends in mobile and explain why it’s “not too late for businesses to still be early” in this space. We invite you to
livestream
these talks at 1pm ET/10am PT this Thursday on desktop, or—for the first time from a Google event in the U.S.—on both Android and iOS mobile devices as well. In other words, you can Think Mobile....on mobile!
Right now, advertisers engaging on mobile are increasing brand awareness, purchase intent and sales with effective mobile search and display campaigns. Mobile developers and publishers are supporting
very profitable
businesses with advertising revenue. And consumers are benefiting from relevant and useful ads on their mobile devices.
To help all businesses take advantage of the opportunities that mobile advertising presents, we’re focusing on three core principles with our mobile ads business:
Seamless
: We’re bringing the best characteristics of desktop advertising to mobile devices. We want to help marketers and developers extend the benefits of their desktop advertising to people on mobile devices, while effectively managing their campaigns and ad space across many channels.
Inclusive
: It’s clear that mobile is about more than just one device, one type of ad format or one style of ad campaign. Our ad solutions span across search, text, display, video, commerce and more, on a wide variety of devices, and enable businesses and consumers to connect in newly relevant and useful ways.
Made for mobile
: Mobile devices have unique characteristics like location awareness and touch screens (and the ability to make phone calls!) that make it easy for people to engage with information conveniently, and create unique opportunities for businesses as well. Our ad solutions are built to help marketers, developers and publishers take advantage of these mobile-specific characteristics.
The power of constant connectivity on mobile is a thrilling new reality, and has already transformed the way people engage with information, businesses and certainly with each other. We’re just now scratching the surface of what’s possible on mobile. This is an exciting time, and there’s much more to come.
Posted by Karim Temsamani, Global Head of Mobile
This week in search 2/4/2011
February 4, 2011
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "
This week in search
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
This week it got just a bit faster to find the right things to buy and the right places to go, with a little help from Google—and your friends. Simply type a few characters and get Google Instant results in the “Shopping” view, and find recommendations from your friends with Hotpot in search results.
Instant results in the “Shopping” view
Now you can shop faster than ever and get the speed of Google Instant when comparing prices, looking for nearby stores and learning about products you want to buy. For example, if you’re searching for a cast iron skillet, we’ll start showing you relevant pans as you type [cast iro...]. Click “Shopping” in the left-hand panel and try searching for [sweater wrap shawl], [android phone] or anything else.
Now results will appear as you type in the “Shopping” view and in Google Product Search
Hotpot recommendations in search results
Earlier this week we
added
Hotpot recommendations to regular search results on Google. So now, if you’re looking for restaurants in San Francisco, you can simply search Google for [
restaurants sf
]. If a friend has rated a particular place, you might see her opinion right beneath the listing. We also expanded Hotpot to 38 new languages so people can share their favorite places around the world.
Hotpot recommendations from your friends now appear right in your usual search results
Whether you’re cooking at home or dining out, we hope this week’s updates help you find what you’re looking for just a little bit faster.
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management
YouTube Highlights 2/3/2011
February 3, 2011
This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “
YouTube Highlights
” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.
Since our last update, we’ve connected you with the U.S. President via an exclusive YouTube interview, brought the Sundance Film Festival to your virtual door and launched a new homepage that’s personalized to your interests.
YouTube World View kicks off
For the second year in a row, President Obama sat down with YouTube for his
first interview
after the State of the Union speech. The President took the opportunity to respond to the
protests in Egypt
, address concerns on jobs, debt and health care, and to answer a series of more personal questions that
you submitted
in video and text via YouTube.
This interview marks the beginning of the YouTube World View program, a series of interviews that will let you ask important questions of public leaders and big thinkers from around the world.
U.S. Speaker of the House
John Boehner
will be doing a YouTube Interview soon, so stay tuned for more news on how to participate.
“Life in a Day” premiered at Sundance
We
premiered
the world’s largest user-generated documentary “
Life in a Day
” last week at the
Sundance Film Festival
in Park City, Utah. After months of hard work, Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald and a team of editors created a 90-minute documentary film based on thousands of videos uploaded from around the world on a single day—July 24, 2010. The film will be distributed in the U.S. on the one-year anniversary of that date and available on YouTube at the same time. Between now and then, “Life in a Day” will play at film festivals worldwide and international distribution deals will be put in place in other regions.
YouTube and the Sundance Film Institute
also teamed up to bring you a collection of past and present short films in the YouTube Screening Room.
The Onion’s A.V. Club “Inventory” lists comes to YouTube
The Onion
’s sister publication the A.V. Club debuted a
new video series
on YouTube called “Inventory,” based on the popular lists that catalog the unconventional—everything from the “19 artists who dramatically reinvented themselves after their early work” to “25 songs about outdated (and soon-to-be outdated) technology.”
YouTube partner Josh Sundquist is January’s “On the Rise” star
Our congratulations to
Josh Sundquist
, who edged past
Luke Conard
in the final hours to win this month’s edition of
On the Rise
, a program in which you decide who gets featured on the YouTube homepage based on a shortlist of channels that have experienced fast growth in the last month.
The “Bobee?” Track this and other trends
Each weekday,
YouTube Trends
takes a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We comb through YouTube's search data to investigate top spiking search terms and the videos they lead to. For example, we've recently come across a
new dance craze
popping up in Taiwan called "Bobee.” Find out what
other interesting trends we’ve uncovered
.
New YouTube homepage for everyone
With the
new YouTube homepage
, rolled out to everyone this month, our goal was to put more of an emphasis on "videos for you.” So we removed or moved some elements of the page to make room for videos that matter more to you—your subscriptions, friends’ sharing and recommendations. We hope you enjoy more videos as a result and are always open to hearing your
suggestions for improvement
.
Five questions for Jack Conte and Natalie Dawn, Pomplamoose
What you hear is what you get with
Pomplamoose
, a YouTube musical partner that’s garnered millions of video views on YouTube. Every sound you hear in their music videos is produced by an instrument you see played in their music videos—a refreshingly old-fashioned idea they call the “
videosong
.” Pomplamoose’s approach to original music has opened up opportunities for them in other arenas like TV (see their
Hyundai commercials
).
Learn how they got their start
.
We’ll update you again in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can get frequent updates from the team on the
YouTube Blog
.
Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team
IPv6 marks the next chapter in the history of the Internet
February 3, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Public Policy Blog
)
In the same way your phone is associated with a unique number, your computer is assigned a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address when you connect to the Internet. The current protocol,
IPv4
, allows for approximately 4 billion unique addresses—and that number is about to run out.
This morning the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
announced (PDF)
that it has distributed the last batch of its remaining IPv4 addresses to the world’s five
Regional Internet Registries
, the organizations that manage IP addresses in different regions. These Registries will begin assigning the final IPv4 addresses within their regions until they run out completely, which could come as soon as early 2012.
As the last blocks of IPv4 addresses are assigned, adoption of a new protocol—
IPv6
—is essential to the continued growth of the open Internet. IPv6 will expand Internet address space to 128 bits, making room for approximately 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses (enough to last us for the foreseeable future).
Google, along with others, has been working for years to implement the larger IPv6 format. We’re also participating in the planned
World IPv6 Day
, scheduled for June 8, 2011. On this day, all of the participating organizations will enable access to as many services as possible via IPv6.
Today’s ICANN announcement marks a major milestone in the history of the Internet. IPv6, the next chapter, is now under way.
Update
2/4/2011
: Corrected the number of addresses possible with IPv6.
-Ed.
Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
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